Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that uses a remote maintenance service, a system, and methods of controlling these, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-208974, a remote maintenance service performed by audio and moving image communication and remote control for a multi function peripheral is proposed. In the remote maintenance service, it is possible to solve a problem upon an error occurrence on the multi function peripheral by a call-center conveying an error solving approach directly to a user without a worker (hereinafter referred to as a serviceman) going to a site in order to perform maintenance. With this, it becomes possible to shorten the time required to resolve the error. In this kind of remote maintenance service, it is effective to realize a connection to the call-center using communication means of the multi function peripheral without the user using an apparatus other than the multi function peripheral such as a telephone device or a PC. In general, a connection from the Internet towards an information terminal that is blocked by a firewall is restricted. Meanwhile, a connection to the Internet from the information terminal that is within the firewall is permitted if HTTP which has a high affinity with the firewall is used. Thus, with two information terminals blocked by firewalls, it is possible to realize a session establishment between the information terminals by performing connections from each of the information terminals to a relay server to which connection as an HTTP client is possible. By using such communication means, it becomes possible for a user to use a call-center at a wider range if an environment is such that connection to the Internet is possible.
However, there is a problem with the above described conventional technique as recited below. For example, there are cases in which, in a remote maintenance service, a setting that normally is not displayed on the user side, such as an initial setting of the multi function peripheral, is performed by an instruction or an operation from the call-center side depending on the contents of the maintenance or the contents of the trouble. For example, in a case of a device glitch, a device maintenance screen is displayed such as one for settings that only the serviceman performs if it is not the case of the remote maintenance. In such a screen, there are settings that are only publicized to those who understand maintenance contents, and are only publicized to limited users such as the serviceman so that a setting for which an operation cannot be guaranteed is not performed intentionally. Meanwhile, there is a usage approach in which, with the remote maintenance service, not only the remote maintenance service requested so that the user can directly solve the problem, but also a serviceman that went to a site, using knowledge from the call-center, performs maintenance on the device using the remote maintenance service. Also, there is the possibility that the maintenance screen is continuously displayed even in a scene in which it is not desired that the maintenance screen be displayed in a case where the remote maintenance service is performed using the above described conventional technique.